There are four “Clarke’s Laws” and the third of them is:
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Now, I have been watching and reading various pro-and-contra postings about medicine with increasing concerns and I think I Arthur C. Clarke’s law can be updated as follows.
Any sufficiently advanced technocracy is indistinguishable from religion.
This is becoming increasingly relevant as we see more-and-more attacks on experts using the “that’s what you call a fact but really it’s only a belief” tactic. These people are effectively choosing one belief system over what they see as another belief system (for example, science based medicine.) These people are as far removed from the inner workings of science and its products as they are from the inner thoughts of whoever wrote the religious texts in the past. For them there is an unconcious choice between “faiths” and inevitably they choose a belief system which feels easier to understand and less threatening to their other belief systems.